During a visit to the UK, Veronica had designs on a picture story inspired by her latest experience which involved seeing pheasant shoot. Her journey had also included the acquisition of some modest textile pieces which She felt were well suited to the autumnal UK countryside and asked if I had any ideas to help her brings these elements together.

At any one time, I usually have a list of photoshoot visions floating around in my head. As it turned out, I had one of those, half-baked and perfectly suited to her ideas. I was just waiting for a subject to apply it to.

I had already sourced a shotgun, fog-machine and permission to work on a private piece of wooded land, I knew what the images were going to look like and here Veronica was providing the rest of the pieces.

Veronica had ideas of adding one more prop.

She had found someone in a village selling freshly murdered pheasant for just £2.

So now we had the props to tell a story. Implied by the presence of two props in the woods and without a single gun-cartridge fired, she had the means to illustrate her hunting story.

Challenges

On the day of the photoshoot, it was ice cold but thankfully dry.

The setting sun was hanging over the horizon low enough for me to get the atmosphere I wanted but I had to hurry if I was going to capture it before the atmosphere passed.

Of course, like most projects, there were a few technical bumps along the way.

The fog/smoke machine did a fine job, but if you´ve ever worked with these things before, you´ll know that timing is key and dictated by the density and flow of the fog. I had a bit over nightmare trying to gain control over this as the wind kept changing direction just as I had composed a shot, so I would have to either wait for the wind to change back again or reposition the machine before recomposing.

I had chosen a powerful artificial light source to complement the sun but for some reason, it just wouldn´t connect to its battery so rather than waste valuable time trying to make it work, I just grabbed my Sb900 as an off-camera flash that only had an eightth of the power I had hoped for and somehow, with compensation, managed to get a decent result anyway.

Despite appearances, Veronica is a is not a confident, experienced model. She´s a modest and humble person, excited to create something. I think you would agree that she looks awesome in these images.

I would happily do this sort of portrait shoot every day.

It was a commissioned task but with as much creative freedom as a personal project.

Working with light, creating an atmosphere, directing poses, composition, overcoming little hurdles along the way. Finding out that all the information you have absorbed over the many years is all still there in your brain and readily accessable as you need it.